Hello. I took an old computer out of the garage and attempted to boot whatever Windows it had. There were various errors regarding the boot loader. I reinstalled the boot loader and MBR but there were other differing errors when booting up. I tried reinstalling Windows but there were always different errors when booting up. So I took out some of my Linux CD's.

Strangely enough, different flavors of Linux had similar results: The system would fail to completely boot. At differing stages of bootup it would stop with some error, or even without an error. Sometimes it would leave me at a console on virtual display 9 with no shell, and no X. I could press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and get a regular shell, but no X. Running startx failed with an error that didn't seem to make sense, although I didn't write it down...

But once every 3 tries or so, I can get Kubuntu to boot up from the LiveCD and it works fine.

Any idea what could be happening? Although I'm not even sure it's Linux that is the problem...

Thanks in advance!

Can you post any of the errors? Windows, Linux, BIOS, anything?

Dust shorting out the circutry, mostly between memory and mobo. Open it up and take a compressor with a blow gun to it.

Thanks for the replies. I'll try soon. I don't have a compressor with a blow gun, but I can try a fan.
When it boots, it works perfectly though. Does that make sense?

I prefer a can of compressed air rather then a compressor. Static electricity can build up and damage the computer plus the air may not be clean due to the possibility of oil and water.

Could be many things. I would check the memory and the power supply.

I'm assuming you're referring to running the Live CD when it runs after 2 or 3 tries. A live CD runs in memory. It can't be a dirty optical drive lens as you mentioned problems booting after installation and the Live CD works great when it does. It may be the hard drive has developed some bad sectors which can be taken care of either with a utility like spinrite, or a utility used to zero out a drive, dd can zero a drive but I don't think it can re-map bad sectors, this place herehas a free utility called "Copywipe" that should take care of bad sectors while wiping a drive/partition.
I, on the other hand, am starting to lean towards faulty memory as suggested earlier. Because the Live CD works great one out of three or so times, there's no hard drive involved here, and when it runs, it runs great which sort of eliminates the optical drive. Again, could just be dust between the memory modules and the mother board.